“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(The 47th envelope experiment was held during the session, as noted by the tracing on page 91. The object was a faded maple leaf that Jane and I had picked up, along with others, on a walk last year, probably in October 1965. I subsequently made a watercolor drawing of this leaf and another. As will be seen the object led to some data that is somewhat difficult to evaluate, but Jane and I believe it legitimate.

Do you have an envelope for me, Joseph?

(Jane paused, and at 10:16 I handed her the envelope for our 47th experiment. She took it from me without opening her eyes, but instead of pressing it to her forehead she held it quietly in her lap with one hand. Once again she held her right hand to her eyes.)

(I had been able to ask Seth six questions concerning the envelope data—the most so far, I believe.

(The connection between the envelope object and the death-in-the-family reference is, simply, that the object was picked off the sidewalk beside the home of my Aunt Mabel, and that Aunt Mabel, Jane and I attended the funeral of the family member. The connection is more complicated than this, but to avoid confusion I will explain this portion mentioned above first.

(Aunt Mabel and I seldom see each other. Jane has met her just three times during the eleven years we have been married. The third time was at the funeral of my Aunt Ella on August 8,1965, in Wellsburg, NY. Thus the most recent time that Jane had a chance to speak at length to Aunt Mabel involved the funeral of a member of the Butts family. In addition Seth dealt at length with Aunt Ella in the 176th session of August 9,1965, the day after her funeral. Note that the object was secured two months after Aunt Ella’s funeral. We have noticed this curious time jump before in the envelope experiments, backwards as it were. Jane possessed strong emotional memories regarding the funeral, and clairvoyant knowledge of the envelope object in some form; evidently Seth responded to, or deliberately chose, what he perceived as the stronger intensities pertaining to Aunt Ella’s funeral over the object itself.

(It appears that Jane has formed an association that links Aunt Mabel with funerals, as seen above. If this seems tenuous, we think the idea reinforced by the fact that Jane and me and Aunt Mabel also attended another funeral together—that of Aunt Mabel’s husband, who died several years ago. This was the first time Jane met Aunt Mabel. Thus Aunt Mabel was involved with funerals and related activities on two out of the three occasions that Jane has spoken with her; these two occasions being the times when Jane could exchange more than greetings with her, also. Jane and I do not think tonight’s envelope data contains any references to the death of Aunt Mabel’s husband.

(“Gun. Something to do with a gun, or something triggered, or explosive.” More references to the situation outlined above. Note that most of this data has meaning for Jane in a strong way because of the emotional content, and that I am relatively unaffected. As stated, the connection between the envelope object and Aunt Mabel and her home had to be made before this data fell into place. I did not understand much of it on my own.

(“Unpleasant episodes remind Ruburt of your parents. In connection with the episodes, four, four in the afternoon or four people, two male and two female. A distant connection here with a death in the family involved.” The death in the family reference here could mean only Aunt Ella, which led us to Aunt Mabel and her home, near where we obtained the envelope object. Without going into detail here we can say that four refers both to the time of the funeral services, and an idea involving Jane and me and my parents, in connection with the funeral, that wasn’t carried out.

(“Red and yellow, strips I believe, and a cardboard backing.” I used two of the maple leaves Jane and I gathered on our October 1965 walk as subjects for a watercolor painting. The envelope object is one of them. Both of the leaves were fall colors—red and yellow, with some green. There may be other connections here but we did not ask Seth. I don’t see the strips reference, or the cardboard backing.

(“And something that seems to go inward here.” is interesting to me, a good description of how the two leaves curled at the edges during the several days it took me to make the very detailed drawing. The curling took place as they dried out; they had been damp from being outside. This curl cannot be seen in the tracing on page 91 to any degree. In order to get the object inside the first of the two envelopes I had to flatten it out. This pressure caused the leaf to crack in many places; it is by now very brittle. After the experiment I had to tape it to a sheet of paper in order to preserve it for the notebook in which we keep our envelope objects.